Eleanor had evidently done what she had been asked to do, for O'Bannon seemed to have dropped out of the world. His name was never mentioned, and as week after week went by it seemed to Lydia that she herself was forgetting him. Perhaps a time would come when she could even see him without wrecking her peace of soul. Her only sorrow was the delay in Evans' pardon. It didn't come. Lydia could not enjoy her liberty with Evans in prison. The forms had all been complied with, but the governor did not act. At last Mrs. Galton suggested her going to Albany; or perhaps she knew someone who would have influence with the governor. Yes, Lydia knew someone--Albee. Albee was now senator from his own state, and a busy session in Washington had kept him there. He had been among the first to telegraph Lydia. She found his message and his flowers in the house when she first came home. The message sounded as if it had come from a friend; but Lydia knew that it had not; that Albee had escaped from her and her influence, or thought he had. She had known it even in the days of her trial, and looking back on the facts and on herself she wondered that she had not resented it. Those were days in which she had awarded punishments readily, and Albee had really behaved badly to her. They had been very nearly engaged and yet the instant she was in trouble he had deserted her. He had gone through all the motions of helping her, but in spirit she knew that Albee the day she killed Drummond had begun to disentangle himself. She felt not the least resentment against him; only she recognized the fact that his remoteness from her made it more difficult to make use of him for Evans, unless--the idea suddenly came to her--it might make it easier. He would avoid seeing her if he could; but if she found her way to him he might be eager to atone, to set himself right by doing her a definite favor. The evening of the day that she saw this clearly she took a train to Washington. The next morning she was waiting in his outer office before he reached it himself. A new secretary--the old one had been promoted to some position of political prominence at home--did not know her and had not been warned against her by name. So she was sitting there when Albee came in with his old cheerful, dominating, leonine look. Just for the fraction of a second his face fell at seeing her, and then he hurried to her side, as if out of all the world she was the person he most wanted to see. It must not be supposed that Lydia had become so saintly that she had forgotten her knowledge of men. She knew now that if she were cordial to Albee she could not depend on his doing what she wanted. If on the other hand she withheld her friendship she was sure he would bid high for it. She ignored all his flustered protestations. She smiled at him, a smile a little sad, a little chilly and infinitely remote.